We’re back after a small break due to illness and straight into a wealth of racing information with all of the main highlights from the Paralympics in Rio. Sarah’s collected a heap of information and as much video as possible, so do make sure to check it all out. We also have MTB worlds to cover, the Lotto Belgium Tour, The Madrid Challenge, and the Giro Toscana. In time-trial action there’s the Chronos de Champenois, and to top it all off cyclocross season is kicking off. Brace yourselves kids, this one’s a heck of a ride. (1:02:41 MIN / 57.40 MB)

Recent racing

We loved this video from our friend Coreen Mazzochi, who made Giro Toscana highlights videos in the collection above, but also made this backstage video diary, showing what it’s like to cover the race:

It’s a huge podcast this week as there’s so much racing to cover and to look forward to! We first take a look at the Lotto Belgium Tour, Giro Toscana, Chrono Champenois, the Madrid Challenge, para-cycling and look ahead to all of the excitement of the road world championships in the USA. There’s some rum, plenty of swearing and hilarity going on as well. Sadly Dan ‘accidentally’ stopped recording just before Sarah declared herself victorious and so the episode title acknowledges his loss. (1:23:59 MIN / 80.62 MB

Things we talked about this week

This week’s racing

Videos, photos and results from the Lotto Belgium Tour, Para-cycling Road World Cup #4 (Pietermaritzburg), Giro della Toscana, Molly Shaffer Van Houweling’s Hour Record and the Madrid Challenge are all collected in this post.

There was also racing in Australia, the NRS Amy’s Otway Tour(Great Ocean Road, wow!)

The final week of women’s road cycling before the Road World Cycling Championships start in Richmond, and it went out with a bang, with video from the Lotto Belgium Tour, Giro Toscana and the Madrid Challenge crit-like day race. And then we also have the final Para-cycling Road World Cup of 2015, in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa AND the latest attempt on the Hour Record by Molly Shaffer Van Houweling. In chronological order…

This has a really great parcours, with something for everyone, and the race pulled in the excellent Motomedia team to give us daily video. If you only have time to watch one, make it the final 4th stage, over the hills and cobbles of Geraardsbergen, including, of course, the Muur – but really I’d settle in and watch them all…

The story about *that* kit, belonging to Colombian domestic cycling team, IDRD-Bogotá Humana-San Mateo-Solgar, is still appearing all over the place. I wrote about it, and linked to Alex Murray’s piece which was the first to do actual investigation into what colour the kit was really.

So I’m not going to talk about it in itself, but I’m interested in these three takes, especially on the mediastorm – why has this one got to the point it’s in every newspaper, on tv, all over the internet?

UPDATE! And I love cyclocosm‘s take on how he thinks Brian Cookson could have handled it…. scroll down!

Before I start, huge thanks to fmk, who sent me a link to this – CyclingInquisition interview with Angie Tatiana Rojas, who designed the kit, on why she made the choices, and how it’s all felt for her. It’s great to finally hear her voice in all this.And Ghostie sent me this video of Rojas talking about it, and the team showing the kit (crazy they needed to have a press conference about it!) (it is a TERRIBLE video from the Telegraph, btw. “Vagina-like”? Gold fabric over chamois looks nothing like mine!

Guess what team?! It’s the Week of Worlds! (WoW!) That’s right we talk all things worlds (well, except for the road race because that’s going to be part two). Before we get into all the awesome things that are going to happen in Ponferrada we catch up on the Lotto-Belisol Belgium Tour, a race we’d rather not talk about (Giro Toscana), the Chrono Champenois with Time Trial interestingness, and THEN we start to talk about Worlds! It’s so exciting and there’s SO MUCH to talk about it’s amazing. Because we also cover some great blogs and articles we saw during the week, and of course we kind of have to talk about ~that~ kit and the kind of weirdness of a story being hyped beyond all recognition. I (Dan) mean, what else do you call a story about a nude kit that’s clearly not a nude kit even in the photo that’s allegedly nude-ish? And then on top of that, what do you say when the UCI has time to comment on that (even though according to their own rules they must have already been aware of the kit – and also, it’s gold so WTAF?) but still can’t comment on stories of riders not being paid by teams and other actual issues? Well, as it turns out, we have quite a bit to say. I know, you’re surprised. (1:19:41 MIN / 74.71 MB)

People have been asking me about my thoughts on that Colombian kit, the IDRD-Bogotá Humana-San Mateo-Solgar one from the Giro Toscana. I was a bit confused – I laughed, RTed it and talked about it online last week, filed under “fugly”, because I always have a softspot for terrible kits – like Footton-Servetto’s, or the ones with appalling colour clashes. I’ve had a couple of days cutting back my internet use, so it was a little bit of a shock to hear that this kit has gone viral. I mean, don’t get me wrong, there are some bad choices there, and “looks ‘nude’ in photos in bad light” is never a good move, but the reaction has been a little bit extreme.

This afternoon, people started linking me to articles on it – like this one, on BBC Sport, which hilariously has protected us from the thought of genitalia with a modesty panel, which makes it seem so much worse than it really is. There are articles on the Guardian and apparently all the other big UK newspapers, and on websites like Jezebel and Buzzfeed, it’s been discussed on at least two national UK radio stations – and part of this interest is because of Brian Cookson, the head of the UCI, who tweeted this:

To the many who have raised the issue of a certain women's team kit, we are on the case. It is unacceptable by any standard of decency.